Blue whale bones buried in manure for cleaning

Royal Ontario Museum team uses composting process to clean the whale bones

A team with the Royal Ontario Museum was in Trenton, Ont., on Thursday to bury in manure some of the bones from two blue whale carcasses. The composting process will clean the bones. (ROM Biodiversity Twitter photo)

The whales were two of nine rare and endangered whales that became trapped in pack ice earlier this spring. It's believed the whales were either crushed by ice or drowned as they tried to surface to breathe.